Dear Pleasure Activists,

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Lately, I have been noticing a very specific kind of hesitation showing up with the people I work with. It tends to surface at the edges of a session, after someone has already shared the parts of themselves that feel aligned with liberation, with consciousness, with the identity they have worked so hard to claim, and then something softer begins to emerge underneath it all, something more vulnerable and far less certain.

 

They lean in slightly, their voice often lowering, and what follows is not a declaration but a confession, as if what they are about to say might somehow undo the integrity of everything we have built together.

 

They tell me that they think they might want to live with one of their partners, or that they can imagine getting married or having children, or that they notice themselves wanting to spend more time with one lover in a way that feels different from their other relationships, and almost immediately there is a tightening around that desire, a fear that it means they are doing something wrong, that they are creating hierarchy, that they are slipping back into patterns they thought they had already dismantled.

 

And almost immediately, before I can even respond, I watch the shame arrive.

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It moves quickly through the body, tightening the shoulders, softening the voice, reshaping desire into something that suddenly needs to be explained or justified, as if wanting closeness has become a political misstep rather than a human experience. There is often a subtle apology embedded in the way they speak, a quiet attempt to distance themselves from their own longing, to prove that they still understand the systems, that they have not somehow regressed.

 

Every time this happens, I feel something in me slow down, because what I am witnessing in that moment is not a failure of liberation but a collision between awareness and desire, where the intellect has learned to critique the structures that shaped us but the body is still reaching toward something that feels meaningful, regulating, or alive.

 

I recognize this place intimately because I have stood inside it myself, holding both the clarity that came from deconstructing the scripts I was raised in and the confusion that followed when my own desires did not resolve as neatly as I expected them to.

 

There was a time when I believed that if I had done the work deeply enough, my desires would become more liberated, more clearly my own, and in that process some of the traditional life scripts I had been taught to want might fall away, things like having children, building a life in a conventional structure, or living together because I would finally be able to see them clearly.

 

And in some ways, they did change.

 

Not in the sense that the desires disappeared, but in the way I could imagine them.

 

The meaning of marriage shifted from a singular romantic destination into something more practical at times, like accessing legal or financial benefits, while love itself expanded beyond that container into ceremonies, into chosen rituals, into relationships that were not confined to one structure. Living together softened into something more fluid, where community and closeness could coexist with autonomy, where I could be deeply connected to others while still maintaining space that was distinctly my own, and even the question of children began to open beyond a two-person model into something more communal, more distributed, more rooted in collective care.

 

So, the desires did not disappear, but the visions attached to them transformed.

 

I thought clarity would simplify everything, but what I eventually came to understand, both through my own life and through years of sitting with clients inside the complexity of their relationships, is that liberation was never about erasing desire. It was about changing our relationship to it.

 

Yes, our desires are shaped by systems, and it is wise, necessary even, to stay curious and critical about that, to ask where our longings come from and whose interests they have historically served, but pleasure is still a compass, a living, breathing signal inside of you that is constantly orienting you toward or away from what feels aligned.

 

So when we talk about stepping off the escalator (attraction, dating, exclusivity, marriage, kids, dying alone together) and choosing to walk the stairs, we are talking about your relationship with your own pleasure and the willingness to stay in conversation with it over time.

 

Of course, we can leave both the stairs and escalator behind altogether and design your own landscape. I see you. That is also a beautiful path. But, this letter today is for the folks out there who do want some aspects of the stairs while embodying their radical liberation. You belong here as well.

 

I want you to imagine yourself standing at the base of that staircase.

 

To your right, there is a relationship escalator, steady and automatic, carrying people upward into a sequence that has already been decided, a path that does not ask you to check in with yourself as it moves you along. To your left, there are stairs, and each step requires contact, each step asks something of you, each step invites you to feel whether this still belongs to you as you move.

 

You have to choose to keep going.

 

You have to feel your body as you move.

 

You have to decide, moment by moment, whether this is still aligned.

 

This is what liberation offers, the return of authorship and the return of responsibility because walking the stairs means you are the one who has to keep checking in, the one who has to notice when something no longer feels good, the one who has to trust yourself enough to pause, to pivot, to leave, to choose again.

 

And this is where so many people hesitate, because underneath the desire to walk the stairs there is often a quiet fear that if they start walking, they might end up right back on the escalator, that choosing to live with someone or build something that looks structured might slowly pull them into something they did not consciously choose.

 

What if I lose myself?

 

Can I trust myself?

What if I get stuck?

 

You will not be stuck if you are in relationship with yourself, if you are listening, if you are willing to keep choosing, because the difference between the escalator and the stairs is not the destination, it is the ongoing consent, the continued relationship with yourself that says, I am still here. I am still choosing this. I am still aligned. And, if that changes, I can change.

 

You can step back.

 

You can reorient.

 

You can choose again.

 

This is where pleasure becomes more nuanced because we are talking about sustainable pleasure, the kind of pleasure that nourishes your life, that holds you not just in the beginning, but over time, the kind that supports your aliveness rather than depletes it.

 

Sometimes something feels good in the moment and not in the long arc of your life.

 

Sometimes the body tells you later.

 

Sometimes the “stomach ache” comes after.

 

This is something I witness often, especially on the topic of NRE inside the Pleasure Liberation: Non-Monogamy Group Program, where people are not just thinking about these ideas but actively practicing them in community and where the tension between desire and ideology becomes something we can name, explore, and move through together in real time.

 

So when you are walking the stairs, pleasure is not just about what feels good right now, it is about what feels nourishing over time, what supports your relationships, your nervous system, your sense of self, and trusting that you can feel the difference, trusting that if you miss it sometimes you will catch it later, and trusting that if you find yourself somewhere that no longer feels aligned, you will not abandon yourself there.

 

That is the real practice.

 

Not perfection.

Not purity.

But trust.

 

Ongoing consent and reflection.

 

Trust that you can walk, trust that you can pause, trust that you can turn around, and trust that you can choose again. Trust that you have community who can support you with staying in alignment.

 

It is okay to walk the stairs.

 

It is okay to want to live with someone, to spend more time with one lover, to build a life, to create something enduring, to choose forms of closeness that feel meaningful to you, and none of that makes you less liberated, none of that means you have failed because the work was never about removing your options.

 

It was about giving you the freedom to choose them.

 

Your Pleasure Practice

 

Journal Prompt:
Where in my relationships do I feel a desire for more depth, consistency, or shared life-building, and how can I begin to discern whether that desire reflects sustainable, nourishing pleasure?

 

Somatic Practice:
Bring to mind a desire you have been questioning or minimizing, and notice what happens in your body as you let yourself fully feel it without critique, paying attention to where you feel expansion, warmth, or contraction.

 

Relational Practice:
Share one desire you have been holding quietly with a partner or trusted person, expressing it as an invitation rather than a demand, and notice what it feels like to let that desire be seen while staying connected to yourself.

 

You are not doing this wrong.

 

You are not less liberated because your desire includes intimacy, continuity, or even structure.

 

You are allowed to choose it consciously.

 

You are allowed to walk the stairs.

 

And, you are allowed to leave it all behind.

 

Sending All My Love,
Dr. Nicole

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Dr. Nicole Thompson

Sex and Relationship Psychotherapist

Psychedelic-Assisted Liberation

Clinical Psychology